The Voice Crying In The Wilderness will continue serving as a Social Justice advocate for those in genuine need who did the best they could. Leanderthal is the Voice Crying In The Wilderness. Any real or imagined association of the name Leanderthal with an extinct species is entirely justified.

For some, the followers of the cult preacher, Harold Camping, it is the day the world was supposed to end,
but the he pushed it forward to October 21st. Since that didn't happen either, they, his followers, playing with a deck several cards short of full, apparently have decided that the rapture actually did occur on May 21st despite and contrary to evidence, facts on the ground, what most of us accept as reality.

I'm one who wants to know as much as I can about how everything works, but I'm also one who understands that if we homo sapiens(wise men) ever understood it all we would find ourselves adrift in a kind of frightening sea which only Herman Melville an Stephen Crane have dared to confront.

So, if someone disappears before your eyes, perhaps it's because the rapture has already happened. But blink and look again before you spread that word.

As for the significance of May 21st, it just happens to be my birthday. I wasn't taken up into the clouds on that day in 1937, unless of course being born to life on this Earth is actually the rapture. Who's to say?

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I started this post a few weeks ago, and am now just working on making it a message I'm willing to put out there.

Troy Davis was murdered last night, just a few hours after I retreated to the safety and comfort of my bed.

I woke up sick at my stomach this morning, anticipating that the news would be about his
execution. The state of Georgia, USA, murdered Troy Davis last night. The only solace
for me is that his long ordeal ( the fear, the sheer horror of being strapped down on a gurney so that another human being can kill him with a lethal injection) is over. And this is legal!!!

Whenever I have been exposed to news of another living being's helplessness at the hands of other living beings I always project my feelings on that person who must have experienced the most horrific feeling of helplessness upon knowing that there is nothing one can do to escape death..

Most other countries have eliminated the death penalty. We're supposed to be a humane society. Apparently only when it comes to our household pets.

Here's an essay by a Jewish American writer, the essence of which is critical of the American and Israeli stonewalling of the Palestinian's request for statehood recognition at the UN.

I've been heartened, and somewhat surprised, by the recent straight talk coming out against the hard right Likud leadership in Israel, from the minds and hearts of those who might be called speakers for the liberal, progressive, non Zionist Diaspora Jews.

Tom Friedman, and Glenn Greenwald, to name those Jewish journalists whom I, as a Gentile, a goy, consult on such matters, have pulled few punches lately when criticizing, if not condemning, the right wing, hard line, Likud party leadership for their clearly undemocratic treatment of Palestinian leadership.

Here's a piece which asks the question, Does Obama deserve credit for killing Qhadaffi? (I don't care how it's spelled. It's a small mind that can spell a word only one way.)

I try to stay away from moralist positions, but the facts on the ground, or in the air as it were, recently point to a pattern, which if accepted as OK, that is to say no one speaks out against it, makes me again "accepting", the fifth and final stage of grieving, that I don't have to live forever, and sad for what kind of world my children will have to explain to their children, my grandchildren. I know, I know, it's a story of doom as long as there have been people to tell the story.

In one of my poems in the collection, The Poet and the Pendulum, I wrote about this. It has to do with the nature of Nature. Nature doesn't care that we shit in our own pew, she'll repair all and anything we manage to
damage in our shitty little time on Her Earth. In contrast to our Narcissistic view of ourselves, we exist and are only alive for a nano second of geological time, and who knows, Nature's/Creator's time.

I've often wondered about the axiom "fight fire with fire". That can be momentarily appealing ,especially in the abstract in places like Yellowstone National Park, with intentionally set fires as backfires and controlled fires,. as both a short term tactic, and a long term strategy. It upsets me when helpless creatures of Nature are killed in the process and accepted as collateral damage. That's the PETA part of me.

The humanist part of me, a self described agnostic, just makes me sad that human beings, of which I have to sadly admit I am one, haven't ever, still can't and likely won't ever stop killing each other, sometimes seemingly, just for the sport of using new weapons.

On a more grounded, or elevated, as it were, basis, the justification for killing an enemy seems to rely on what the enemy identification is; if enemy combatant, take him out of circulation by killing him. So what constitutes an enemy combatant?. A soldier in the uniform of another country which is acknowledged by all as an enemy is an easy call. That is so last century though. Our current enemies, those we choose to call them such, aren't likely to be wearing the uniform of any country, but are likely to be the kind who hide behind the "camouflage" of no uniform. They are what our military leaders call terrorists, so those who promote war somewhere all the time have defined our enemies by coming up with a universal term which is so broad as to defy its vulnerability to challenge.

The Mafia is a terrorist organization, as is any militia, as were those who went up against the English in our own revolution, shooting from behind trees, initially in their own civvies, not a uniform. One man's patriot is another man's terrorist. How soon our Neocon/Pentagon/Military/Industrial complex cavemen choose to forget.

But I digress. My real problem is that moral one, the one I'd prefer not to acknowledge; the practice of our own government, under the guise of protecting us, of setting up a group of human beings who are tasked with identifying individuals who are "our enemies" by some subjective standard, subjective because the standards are outside our own ratified Constitution and its Amendments, and who are targeted for elimination, assassination. No due process under the Constitution or the Geneva Convention for these bad guys.

The fact that the weapons set loose are now often drones, essentially robots controlled by
star wars trained technicians continents away from their human targets, is not a big surprise. Killing is killing, assassination is assassination by whatever means. While it's not a big surprise for me it is a chilling reminder that homo sapiens have always, do now, and will always look for more efficient ,more deadly and less risky, ways of killing those other living beings, whether animals for eating or humans for conquering.

(The spear in the hands of a practiced thrower, compared to the bludgeon in the hands of the one who got up close and personal, (read vulnerable), might be the earliest known example.)

If there ever were an American Exceptionalism worthy of respect, it existed, historically, during the time when the documents, which we like to remind ourselves are us, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were actually honored, respected and for the most part
became the standards for which and under which we Americans did our best to live.

Those were the times in which we, our American ancestors, chose our leaders when they more or less tried honestly to represent us, their voters. We, as a new nation, who had just thrown off the tyrannical and occupying force of what was then the acknowledged military dominant nation on Earth, tacitly adopted a world view to avoid getting involved in problems all over the world.

Sadly that seems to be challenged today, as it eventually has been over recorded history of our species .In today's edition it's seen by those who have a serious personal financial interest in maintaining their status, as behavior of a fringe group, a giving up on "real Americans", and at least a lack of patriotism, if not the behavior of a traitor.

These are the Neocons, those who stir the pot of tribalism to create a crisis, to be sure there is always a place to wage war in which they make millions of dollars. Gullible Americans drink the Koolaid that they are being protected by our military.

So who should get credit for killing Qaddafi? What a question. That anyone should get credit for killing another living creature is a sickening cultural meme.

Personal Profile

Retired CEO of an industrial company,now a work/life navigation career counselor and coach, I have enjoyed writing since my English major days at Amherst College. I self-published "The Poet and the Pendulum" in 2001, sixty some poems, rhymes and doggerels of my own. I decided to publish a blog after reading respected journalists likening blogs to pamphlets and papers published during the founding days of this country. I feel strongly the need for alternatives to the so-called main stream media, generally acknowledged and considered to have political leanings. MSM also can be influenced by big money and/or the need to maintain access to politicians; both behaviors usually resulting in the pulling of punches,and often asscociated with taking a dive for money, attributes of greed and cowardice.
I am registered to vote, with no political affiliation. In MA there is no Independent category. I support individuals who are recognized as authorities on important issues, and definitely not simply because they happen to be, for a time, in positions of authority.